Health Meaning

Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) yesterday asked embattled $ 3 billion research agency on the state to stop cancer grants until it addresses concerns about its procedures. The Institute of Prevention and Cancer Research of Texas (CPRIT) responded by announcing a moratorium on new subsidies.

problems CPRIT went public in May, when then-scientific director Alfred Gilman, a Nobel Prize, left to protest against the proceedings of scientific review of the agency. Two other top agency officials, including the executive director of CPRIT, have left in recent weeks amid new allegations-and-investigations in civil and criminal matters how the agency has made certain marketing functions.

In a letter received yesterday, Perry and two other heads of state have asked CPRIT to "fully meet the concerns that have been raised about its processes and operations before future subsidies are granted." The committee monitoring CPRIT replied that he "accepts" and impose "a moratorium on CPRIT grants. ... These issues must be resolved to restore public confidence in CPRIT. "Current grants are not affected, the agency said.

spokesman CPRIT Ellen Read said staff the agency seeking "clarification" about what the moratorium proposals already in the pipeline. this includes those of a request for applications for the first translational price which closed on December 14.

CPRIT funded 502 grants totaling $ 841 million for research, commercialization and prevention since 09. the legislature of the state of Texas is scheduled to hear testimony today about whether the agency should be funded in 2014 2015, according to The Texas Tribune .

a tonic of gut microbes may be the secret recipe to treat a common hospital scourge. The researchers revealed the exact combination of microbes necessary to cure mice with a chronic infection with a bacterium that causes difficult to treat bloating, pain and diarrhea in people. A similar bacterial cocktail may one day be able to replace a controversial treatment involving the consumption of feces to restore the balance of microbes in the gut.

Clostridium difficile is a threat in hospitals and nursing homes, causing nearly 336,000 infections and 14,000 deaths annually in the United States. Antibiotics can temporarily drop the bacteria, but about 25% of infected people relapse, often several times, because the germ produces spores that hand sanitizers and hand washing do not kill. Antibiotics can also turn against because they kill normal microbial community in the gut, opening the way to C. difficile to resettle.

In desperation, some doctors have turned to an unpleasant Contact: successfully treat patients by inserting a tube into the stomach containing ground up, filtered faecal a person healthy subjects containing a dose of beneficial microbes. But this treatment is controversial and in some places illegal, because of the risk of introducing other pathogens.

In search of alternatives, microbiologist Trevor Lawley Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, U.K., and colleagues examined Clostridium infection in mice. Lawley and his colleagues first demonstrated that the spores of the germ can cause any infection recurrences after antibiotic treatment and fecal therapy cures the problem. They then cultured feces used to cure mice, the isolation of 18 types of bacteria. Finally, they began to mix and match, infecting mice with different combinations of bacteria. Among the various combinations tested, only one, a mixture of six very different types of bacteria, cured the mice, they report online today in PLoS Pathogens .

"It is an excellent paper, avant-garde," says Brendan Wren, a microbiologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who was not involved in the study of the mouse. It works now with Trawley to determine if they can find an appropriate bacterial cocktail that will heal humans. If they succeed, Wren said one day "single suppository of the bacteria could prevent C. difficile reinfection and avoid need antibiotics, which can make the problem worse "

* Correction, 05:20 pm.. patients Some doctors have successfully treated for C. difficult with ground up, the filtered fecal matter inserted into the stomach with a tube, not through an enema.

Some well-funded biomedical researchers may have to tighten their belts in a new funding policy announced yesterday by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The agency plans to give further consideration to the proposals of researchers receiving more than $ 1 million per year in direct support grants and can not finance such research is superimposed on what they already do.

After years of flat budgets and lower subsidies success rate, the NIH has been looking for ways to stretch its funding further research. An idea which floated last fall was to limit the amount of grant money the principal investigator (PI) might hold. While some fear that it would hamper the production laboratories, in February the agency announced it was moving forward: high quality researchers applications with at least $ 1.5 million in total annual funding would get a layer additional examination of the scientific council of the Institute funding. The council would ensure that the research is "very promising" and "separate from" the other IP projects.

After piloting the plane during its May round of grant reviews, the NIH has made some changes. A big problem was that because the indirect costs vary from school, those who have a higher overhead rate would be disproportionately affected. So the final policy will cover IPs with at least $ 1 million in direct costs. This adds about 19 grants to about 70 to be revised in September using the threshold of $ 1.5 million, writes the NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research Sally Rockey in his blog Rock Talk. NIH will not require large multi-PI grants to undergo special examinations unless all individual IPs are on the threshold of $ 1 million. And tips can make exceptions, for example for clinical trials, which tend to be more expensive than laboratory research.

Last fall, the NIH has estimated that about 1,0 IP, 6% of the total funds it would be above the threshold of $ 1.5 million of total costs. But with the restrictions in the final policy, less than 1% of all proposals will get additional advice examination, said NIH Scienc eInsider. And because politics is not a cap, it is unclear how much money it will eventually release. (The driver in May was intended to gather input ;. It has not resulted in funding decisions)

Howard Garrison of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, who last year wrote the NIH to support the policy, said it is important anyway. "It will not necessarily solve all our problems. But people have found it an appropriate measure, "says Garrison. A blogger, however, is disdainful of politics: "It will do nothing to feed all the hungry mouths," wrote DrugMonkey

A gunman or gunmen shot and killed up to 11 people this morning in two health clinics in Kano State in northern Nigeria. The shootings follow closely on the heels of the targeted killing of nine polio workers and other humanitarian workers in Pakistan in December and January. Several media reported that the victims were in Kano polio vaccinators as well and have speculated that the terrorist group Boko Haram is involved.

Details are murky, and it is unclear who and how many people were killed, said Oliver Rosenbauer, spokesperson of the Global Initiative to eradicate polio with headquarters in Geneva , Switzerland, the World health Organization (wHO), which is closely following events.

The picture that has emerged to date is that at 9:30 this morning, local time, one or more gunmen attacked two health clinics in quick succession. No one has claimed responsibility.

The government of Kano investigation and, as a precaution, he interrupted all immunization activities against polio that could be underway. WHO has also drawn its members polio field staff and asked them to work from home.

Nigeria is one of the three remaining countries, as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan, where polio remains endemic. The government and international agencies to the eradication initiative intensified campaigns there in recent months to eliminate the virus. As part of these efforts, vaccinators go door to door drops of oral polio vaccine to children. The latest campaign in Kano ended February 5, but sometimes the polio workers continue "mop up" activities for several days.

"Our sympathy goes to the victims and families," says Rosenbauer, who calls the "tragic" and "scandalous" events.

Analysis of queries made to Google, Bing and other search engines can reveal potentially dangerous consequences of mixing requirements before they are known to the Food and Drug administration (FDA), according to a new study. This data mining could even expose the medical risks that slip through undetected clinical trials.

Pharmaceuticals often have side effects that go unnoticed until they are already available to the public. This is especially true of the side effects that occur when two drugs interact, largely because drug tests attempt to identify the effects of a drug at a time. Doctors have few ways to drive these hidden risks, such as reports to the FDA of doctors, nurses and patients. A study in 2011, the data extracted from these reports and FDA discovered a hidden drug interactions: When taken together, the antidepressant paroxetine and pravastatin cholesterol suppressor because hyperglycemia or high blood sugar. After checking that research experiments, the researchers behind the study asks what other sources of information have been left unexploited.

Enter the search engines. Just as Google Flu Trends reveals influenza outbreaks by tracking search terms related to influenza, search queries on combinations of drugs and possible side effects say, "Paroxetine", "pravastatin" and "hyperglycemia" -might enable researchers to identify unforeseen drawbacks to drugs, said researcher Nigam Shah bioinformatics from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. "If a lot of people are concerned about a symptom, which in itself is valuable information."

Although many bad drug reactions are never reported to doctors, people talk about what bothers them all the time on an occasional basis to friends or online, says the biologist Nicholas Tatonetti calculation of Columbia University, who was also involved in the study. "They do not really know," he said. "They are just reports of their symptoms, which is just a normal thing that humans love to do."

Thus, researchers have turned to Microsoft, which gets permission many Internet Explorer users to collect Google, Bing and Yahoo! search queries for research. Microsoft has provided a database containing 82 million queries search engines from 6 million unique users as of 2010. The research team looked for users interviewed "paroxetine" and "pravastatin" or each drug alone, to determine if the same users also sought "hyperglycemia" or other terms describing hyperglycemic symptoms. for example, they may have looked "dry mouth" or the technical term "xerostomia."

Before anyone knew the side effects of the drug combination, one in 10 people looking for both drugs also looked for terms related to hyperglycemia, or about twice what people looking paroxetine or pravastatin alone, reports the team today in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association . The researchers then looked for another 62 pairs of drugs, half known to cause high blood sugar and half unknown. They found that the data mining procedure correctly predicted whether the combo drug did or did not cause hyperglycemia about 81% of the time.

The results add yet another resource for scientists to find clues about the risks of drugs, Shah said, and it can be followed in real time. Hope, he notes, is that companies search engine could analyze data and send the results to the FDA, which would then track down information and alert doctors to potential new risks. "This is information we have access. As a society, we're sitting on it," he said. "We could use it to help the FDA, which is currently based on sources reported."

The new study is "exciting" because the field is so new, said researcher Hojjat Salmasian Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University, who has not participated. "We do not know how much it has potential," he said. "But based on the results that have been published so far in this study and other similar studies, it seems that this is a very important area explore. "

thousands of scientists and advocates for paid patients in a square in downtown Washington, DC, today to hold what organizers billed as the largest ever rally to demand more funds for biomedical research. The event, as reported earlier today with a slide show Science initiated and organized in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) with the support of over 0 organizations , aiming to draw attention to the 5% reduction for the National Institutes of Health budget $ 31 billion (NIH) imposed by Congress last month by sequestration, as well as the flat growth of NIH budget over the last decade. "The continued erosion of funding for the largest institute of medical research in the world, the National Institutes of Health, must end," said CEO AACR Margaret Foti.

AACR and other participants listened for nearly 2 hours unusually hot weather in April that more than a dozen legislators, patient advocates, and celebrities have spoken in support of the NIH. Emcee Cokie Roberts of ABC News and NPR stated that "it could not be a stupid time to cut funds for medical research." Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), a survivor of ovarian cancer, said "is cut lifesaving cancer research because of ideology, and it's wrong." President of the Rockefeller University and former Genentech framework Marc Tessier-Lavigne said he worried most that young people are discouraged from careers in research. "You can ruin our scientific community. If we continue on this path, we will kill the goose that lays golden eggs, "he said, drawing cheers.

Dressed in white T-shirts and an occasional hot pink boa, participants in the rally chanted "more progress, more hope, more life." They raised their cell phones with actress . Maura Tierney of the television series ER to send a mass text message asking Congress to reverse the cuts to NIH

one of the scheduled speakers was missing: NIH Director Francis Collins. Although federal employees can not participate in lobbying activities, Collins was first going to speak as a private citizen, the sources said, but eventually canceled. (NIH spokesperson John Burklow refused to comment on the reasons for Collins, saying only, "Dr. Collins could not attend the rally, however, supports the participants effort to shine a light on the importance of biomedical research.") However, Foti read a message from President Barack Obama, who said he has sent "greetings" and that he also supports "a serious and sustained effort to advance medical research."

Although probably only a few thousand the AACR 18,000 participants left the conference center to the streets to participate, the organizers deemed their event which included tuning supporters via YouTube success. He was "truly historic and unprecedented," said Foti. For a time, tweets with the tag #RallyMedRes of the rally were second only tweets about the death of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher U.K., Foti said afterwards.

It's time to go back on a ticker aging. Drawing on a bizarre experimental technique invented there more than a century, but rarely now, researchers have found that a protein in the blood makes the old mouse hearts appear young and healthy again. It is not yet known if humans react the same way, but scientists hope that this discovery may help treat one of the most frustrating ailments of the heart.

"This is probably the first round we have about what makes the heart young and making the old," said cardiologist Deepak Srivastava of the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease in San Francisco, California who was not involved in the work.

As the heart muscles age, they grow thicker. The thickened heart can still pump blood on normally, but he can not relax enough to fill between the pumps. The condition is called diastolic heart failure, named after the rest of the heart, or diastolic phase. There is currently no treatment to reverse the thickening of the heart and restore normal function.

But researchers continue to seek such a heart fountain of youth. One approach has been to apply a technique of 150 years to infuse young blood in older mice. Parabiosis called heterochronic the method involves surgically connect the systemic circulation of two different ages mouse, opening a flap of skin on the side of each mouse and sewing the two together, so that the pumps of the same blood through the two creatures. (There are more than a century, the technique was developed to study the exchange of nutrients between animals.) Previous studies have found better muscle health and strongest healing in older mice receiving the blood of a younger counterpart. But the heart tissue is not known to be as strong as the skeletal muscles and skin. The effect can work both ways-young mouse stem cells lose power in the old blood.

stem cell biologist Amy Wagers and cardiologist Richard Lee, both of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, wonders if all the factors that circulate in young blood, such as hormones, may affect the aging hearts. Wagers, Lee and their colleagues used parabiosis yoke together on February 5 years mouse (downright ancient in mouse years) with 2-month-old counterparts. The team also joins 12 pairs aged mice and young mice 10 pairs, as witnesses. The first result was "evidently positive," said Lee, who also practices at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. After 4 weeks of access for young mouse heart tissue of five older mice had thinned and softened, looking as spry and flexible as the 2-month-olds. " Older mice had now young hearts, while young mice hearts remained strong.

But the team has spent years trying to understand why; it was often the subject of Lee and weekly bike in paris. "There had found factors that are proposed for the aging factors," said Lee, "but it was not the identification of a circulating factor that can go the other way, to transform old tissue in the youngest tissue. "the team began to examine the factors in the blood, including 69 amino acids and more than a hundred fat. with the help of SomaLogic, a company-protein analysis Boulder, Colorado, the team has made a breakthrough, narrowing down the suspects likely to only 13 factors.

one of the suspects, growth differentiation factor 11, or GDF-11 appears explain the miraculous rejuvenation heart. GDF-11, which regulates the growth of (smell) receptors and olfactory spinal column is produced in abundance in young mice, but production decreases with age. other experiences team on cultured heart cells confirmed that GDF-11 stops the growth of thickening observed with age.

In addition, the researchers report online today in Cell , old mice injected with this protein for 30 days developed younger, stronger heart tissue. GDF-11, they say, directly counteracts the genes responsible for the thickening of the muscle.

"It is conceivable that this is just a story of interesting mice," says Lee, "but we're hoping to get data that could tell us that respect for man . "GDF-11 also appears in human blood, he said, although his role in the aging of the human heart is still uncertain. Then the team will study how GDF-11 affects other age-sensitive organs such as the tissues of the bone marrow.

Srivastava adds that GDF-11 appears to be effective against heart disease due to age, but he hopes that the protein could one day help patients hearts, stiffened by attacks heart, to relax.

This study is a validation of the parabiosis modern science of the 18th century using the molecular biology of the 21st century, says Gerald Dorn cardiologist at the University of Washington in St. Louis . However, the use of technology gives the research a gothic macabre flavor, he said. "I was looking to see if Tim Burton or Vincent Price were a part of the experimental design."

Neanderthals living 0,000 years ago in what is now Croatia has not been exposed to industrial chemicals, and they ate a diet without processed foods. Yet, this did not spare our modern diseases. Scientists have discovered the first known case of a tumor in the rib of a Neanderthal man dating back to there are more than 0,000 years. The oldest known human tumor is there are less than 4,000 years.

"relatively little is known about [tumor] prevalence in ancient times," said forensic anthropologist Douglas Ubelaker of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington who was not involved in the new work. This result " is very useful to understand the roots of this disease. "

the bone-portion of an upper left rib of an adult male Neanderthal-was initially uncovered between 1899 and 105 during the excavation Krapina, a cave in the north of Croatia, who gave hundreds of ancient human remains. But the coast was misfiled and ignored for nearly a century until, in 1999, he was briefly described in a list of specimens. recently, anthropologist David Frayer of the University of Kansas, Lawrence, and colleagues began studying the bone pathologies in Krapina collections. It was immediately clear that the rib fragment- 0.17 in the normal specimen collection, wasnt. "The bone is broken away so that you can look into the room of the cord, where even a child, you expect to see the cancellous bone," says Clearing. "But in this side, instead of have a bone mesh there, it is completely empty. "

Even to the naked eye, scientists have recognized that the blank area of ​​the bone indicated a tumor had once sat there. But to get more details on its size and shape, the researchers turned to the X rays and CT scans. These studies revealed that physical standard characteristics and location of the missing bones were consistent with dysplastic neoplasm fibrous vacuum, a tumor caused by a bone growth disorder, scientists report online today in PLOS oNE . Now fibrous dysplasia neoplasms are one of the most common causes tumors in the ribs and can lead to bone fractures and pain.

"Unfortunately, we do not have more of this particular skeleton," says Clearing. As a result, the researchers can not determine more details about the individual with the tumor, as if his bones had other tumors and if he had symptoms of systemic diseases that can occur alongside the tumors. Researchers also can not draw conclusions from a single sample on the incidence of tumors in the Neanderthal population, he said.

"There is always a temptation to try to read more into a lesion that can be interpreted with confidence," said Ubelaker. "But these authors have done a splendid job and prudent to take proof that insofar as it will go in terms of differential diagnosis. "

the causes fibrous dysplasia neoplasms are not now included. Knowing that they were present in the human family since the prehistoric times could shed light on how tumors co-opt an ancient molecular pathway in our cells to grow. But it will take more than old bone tumors examples to draw broader conclusions, say the researchers.

Boston- A heated discussion broke out today at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics on a hot topic -button: When will we know enough about the risk of rare cancer genes begin to systematically test for them in patients with a family history of cancer

on one side of debate was a team led by geneticist Mary breast cancer -Claire king, who discovered the first risk gene for hereditary breast cancer, BRCA1 . The King group now wants to regularly test some women for other genes linked to cancer. Other researchers, however, have argued that it is premature to test these other genes, which are less well understood.

Physicians often offer women with breast cancer in their family to test for mutations in BRCA1 and a related gene, BRCA2 . If the tests are positive, some women can take preventive measures. Earlier this year, for example, actress Angelina Jolie drew widespread attention for his decision to have a double mastectomy because she inherited a version of BRCA1 which carries a risk of developing breast cancer by 87%

Many women with breast cancer in their family, however, do not test positive for the BRCA mutations ,. At the meeting, Tomas Walsh of the University of Washington, Seattle, reported a test he and King developed, called Broca, as sequences not only BRCA genes, but also about 38 other genes cancer risk. They ran the test on BROCA nearly 2,300 women from 743 families with breast cancer. In 77 families, they were not BRCA mutations, but find changes in other genes they say are definitely linked to breast cancer, such as TP53 and CHEK2 . Another 41 families carried mutations in a larger set of genes whose role in cancer is "emerging," said Walsh.

King and Walsh are not just using their BROCA test in research, however, the university is also offering it as a clinical test for patients. And doctors also can order the commercial test.

This did not sit well with other researchers in the meeting today. "It is irresponsible and unacceptable" in the clinical trial for other genes that BRCA for which the risks are not well established, said Nazneen Rahman of the Institute for Research on Cancer in Sutton , United Kingdom do is "harmful" she said science Insider, because it could cause women to take drastic measures such as having their breasts removed. the King team "mixed research clinical "tests, she said.

King defended their test group in a discussion with reporters. Doctors receive results for 12 genes that evidence suggests can double or quadruple the risk of cancer; this means a chance of a woman developing breast cancer of 25% to 50%, Walsh said. When the team detects these genes, they did not recommend surgery, but screening at regular place with imaging.

King emphasizes that screening BRCA1 was controversial before the community consensus in 1997. "I have a sense of déjà vu," she said science Insider. She said her critics mistakenly think the returns BROCA clinical test results for 40 genes, not just 12. "We are comfortable on those where we already have data," on the basis of their own studies and literature, she said. "We were extremely careful not to report variants" of uncertain significance, she said.

Surgeon Greta Bernier, King group added that during the test only BRCA genes is recommended by the National Comprehensive cancer network, which issues guidelines for the treatment of cancer, his team is confident that the network will soon add other genes on their list. it stresses also doctors can already order tests for the genes on the list of gene-testing companies around.

Melissa Southey from the University of Melbourne in Australia believes that while it is important to test all the cancer risk genes in the research, evidence for clinical trials is strong enough for a small number of genes, and even then only for some specific variants. The problem, she says, is that most other variants are so rare that it may never be possible to study enough people to identify risks. Instead, researchers have to rely on other evidence that mutations are harmful, such as laboratory studies of the proteins encoded by genes.

The same difficulty confronting geneticists as they discover other genetic variants of risk rare, Southey says. "This is the edge, where we are," she said. "We have a lot of information, but not enough to offer advice."